Sub-Centurion Coritha Giordano stood at the edge of the transporter pad aboard the Republic bird of prey Alidar, hands clasped behind her back in the precise posture drilled into every cadet at the Naval Academy. Forcing a calm she didn’t really feel, she turned to the transporter operator and gave a curt nod.

The column of light dissolved, and Coritha found herself under an alien sky so bright and fiercely blue it hurt her eyes. The transporter station was a modest pad tucked behind the promenade of Vasto Marina, half-hidden by flowering trees and bushes and the smell of salt water and frying fish. A warm wind pushed in from what her research showed was the Adriatic Sea.

Standing at the foot of the steps was a human man in his mid-seventies, skin tanned the color of old leather, wearing a white linen shirt open at the throat and an easy grin no Romulan would ever trust. He opened his arms wide enough to encompass the entire coastline.

“Coritha, Caro mia!” he bellowed, as though volume alone could bridge twenty-five years and two species. “Finally, you come home to your blood.”

She stiffened. The words were spoken in Italian, the accent thick Abruzzese, but the Universal Translator in her collar rendered them with clinical perfection. Home… Blood… She felt the faint points of her ears burn beneath the fall of her hair. They were barely pointed at all, a fact the Academy physicians had logged with detached curiosity and that every mirror in her quarters painfully reminded her of daily. She was Romulan. Her human half was just an irrelevant detail.

Enzo Giordano did not wait for permission. He wrapped her in a tight embrace that smelled of the sea, engine grease, and honest sweat. His cheek scraped hers, bristly and warm. She endured it with the same rigid discipline she applied to every unpleasant task.

When he released her, he held her at arm’s length and studied her face with shameless intensity. “You have your mother’s gorgeous eyes,” he said softly. “And my brother’s stubborn chin. Dio, you are beautiful.”

Coritha inclined her head, “Signor Giondano. I am grateful for your invitation.”

He laughed, a deep, joyful laugh. “Signor… So formal, you call me Zio, come. The family waits, and Nonna has been cooking since dawn.”

The ground car was ancient, an open-topped vehicle with a combustion engine. Enzo drove it the way Remans flew Scorpion Attack Flyers in combat: too fast, too close, and with absolute confidence that physics would yield. Coritha gripped the side handle of her door and watched the coastline unspool, pale cliffs, green hills terraced with olive groves, the road twisting like a snake. Every curve revealed another cluster of red-tiled roofs clinging to the rock as if the town had grown there instead of being built. Here and there, she saw other humans, tending fields, walking with horned animals, or hanging clothing in the sun to dry.

They crested the hill above the old city, and Vasto spread beneath them like something from an ancient earth painting. Stone walls baked golden in the sun, church bells marking the hour, the Adriatic glittering beyond like a sheet of hammered duranium. For one unguarded moment, Coritha felt something loosen in her chest, an ache she had no name for and no intention of examining.

The family compound lay just outside the walls, a sprawling mass of connected houses built over centuries, each generation adding a room or a terrace as the mood took them. Cars and skimmers were abandoned in the courtyard with cheerful chaos. Children chased dogs between citrus trees, and small, fat avians pecked around in the dirt lazily. Somewhere, a woman shouted instructions in rapid dialect, and the air was thick with the scent of roasting meats, fresh bread, and the sea.

They spilled out to greet her the instant Enzo killed the engine. Aunts, uncles, cousins she had never met, all talking at once, hands reaching to touch her sleeve, her hair, the faint curve of her ear as if to reassure themselves she was real. Someone pressed a glass of dark red liquid into her hand. Someone else kissed both cheeks before she could step back. A small girl with black curls stared up at her in open wonder.

“You are the Vulcan cousin,” the child announced.

Coritha arched one brow in perfect Vulcan approximation, though the effect was somewhat spoiled by the flush climbing her neck. “Close, I am an officer of the Romulan Republic Navy.”

The girl considered this, then nodded solemnly and ran off.

Last to appear was Nonna, tiny and stout, leaning on a cane carved from olive wood. She was ninety-eight standard years old and looked as though she could outlive the Republic itself. She took Coritha’s face between gnarled hands and studied her for a long moment.

“You have your father’s chin,” she said finally. “And the same proud look. Luckily, you have your mother’s beauty.”

Coritha opened her mouth to say something… but no words came to her mind. Instead, she felt the old woman’s thumbs brush the barely there points of her ears with gentle acceptance, and the words died unspoken.

They fed her until she lost track of courses. Hand-rolled maccheroni alla chitarra with lamb ragù, arrosticini still smoking from the grill, saffron-scented fish broth from the trabocco, olives cured by hands that had never known a replicator. The wine was rough and honest and went straight to her head. She drank it anyway, because refusing would have required explanation, and explanation felt suddenly impossible.

Conversation flowed around her like the sea against the rocks below. They spoke of weather and fishing quotas, and which cousin was marrying which girl from Chieti. They asked careful questions about space, about her mother, about the Alidar. They did not ask why she had waited twenty-five years to come. They simply made room for her at the table as though she had never left.

As the sun began to set, colorfully painting the sky, Enzo stood up and raised his glass.

“To Coritha,” he said simply. “Who crossed the stars to remember she has a family on Earth always here to welcome her.”

Glasses lifted all around the long table. Someone started singing, an old Abruzzese song about love and the sea. Others joined, voices rising and falling in imperfect harmony. Coritha sat very still, the stemless wineglass cool in her hand, feeling the warmth of them press in from every side until the walls she had built so carefully began to crack.

Later, when the children had been carried off to bed and the adults sat lingering over almond cookies, strong dark coffee, and a clear thick liquor that tasted of licorice, Coritha slipped away. She walked the narrow streets of the old town alone, past shuttered windows and climbing, flowering vines, until she reached the loggia that overlooked the sea. Somewhere far below, the waves spoke in a language older than any empire.

For the first time in years, she allowed herself to wonder what her mother had felt, standing on this same spot, looking at the same sea, carrying a child who would never quite belong to either world. Her mother had loved her father deeply and spoke of him often, although Coritha only had faint memories of his face before he passed away from Sakuro’s disease when she was four.

Her comm badge chirped once, softly. Lieutenant Vihausa, no doubt, was checking that she hadn’t been kidnapped by sentimental Terrans. Coritha ignored it.

Tomorrow, she would return to the Alidar to begin their new assignment as part of Starfleet’s Task Force 72. She would file her report, endure Verima’s teasing, and pretend none of this had touched her.

Tonight, she stood on an ancient wall above an ancient sea and let herself be, for one brief hour, simply Coritha. Not sub-centurion, not Romulan, not human.

Just Coritha.

The wind carried the scent of salt and jasmine and distant cooking fires. She breathed it in until her lungs ached, then turned back toward the lights of the house where people who shared half her blood waited with more wine and more songs and more impossible, infuriating, undeniable welcome.

She walked slowly. After all, there was no hurry.